MP3 Player

[ihavemyreasons]

Bought something I never thought I'd ever buy again - an MP3 player. Bought because my latest Samsung phone doesn't have an SD card slot and the internal memory isn't near enough for my music library. Bought a Luoran MP3 Player - $50 cheap chinese made player with only 8gb of internal storage, but Micro SD card slot - just copied files onto 256gb card I already had and was good to go. 4" screen with extremely locked down version of Android - no sideloadimg apps, so stuck with what came installed. Works and sounds great with my bluetooth speaker and included music player apps (threre are 2) are user friendly. Yeah, I could stream my collection but don't have everything in the cloud and this more convenient IMO than streaming locally.

[stansimpson]

Nice!

I was about to recommend the iPod 5th generation. Basically, that's the peak of iPods imo. I still use mine (and have bought it a couple times over already). It's not some little microsquare; still has the upright body and wheel. Very durable. But sounds like you got something even better.

[ihavemyreasons]

After buying an MP3 player I remembered I have a number of old cell phones just sitting around and I kind of felt stupid for not using one of them instead of buying a new MP3 player. And since I like to play around with gadgets and it was raining and cold all weekend, I decided to convert an old phone to an MP3 player anyway. Took an old Samsung Galaxy S4 and updated it to Android 11 which wasn't as easy to do as I was expecting. (Would have worked sticking with old Samsung firmware, but the official Samsung firmware stopped at Android 5 and hasn't gotten a security update in 6 years.)
Phone is supported by LineageOS but it wouldn't install on first couple of attempts. After much reading, I discovered that there were something like a dozen different hardware versions of the S4 and I needed to first downgrade to an older version of the official firmware. Since the phone is 10 years old most links to old official firmware for the model I have were dead.
Once I finally found the right old firmware everything went relatively quickly. LineageOS comes with very few apps pre-installed which probably helps with making phone feel quicker than it did on the stock firmware. And the old Android 5 keyboard was horrid. Had to sideload Google play and spent $10 on a new battery as old battery was...well old and draining far quicker than it should.
Eliminating easy to change batteries and microSD card slots from new Android phones really killed one of the big advantages that most Android phones had over iPhones.
One of the nice things about LineageOS vs most of the other hacked firmware out there is that it receives regular updates "over the air" just like official firmware and it's updated far more regularly than official firmware for new phones.
And now I have 2 Android MP3 players. Battery life on the S4 phone MP3 player still kind of sucks, so new one will be my traveling player.

[ihavemyreasons]

So new battery I put in my S4 "MP3 player" isn't nearly as bad as I thought. Forgot that the S4 has a weird battery quirk that they sold as a feature at the time. Surprised it's stll there with totally new firmware, but...S4 appears to drain the battery from 100% to 50% really quickly and then it sits at around 50% for a long time. Weird, but I remember it from when the S4 was my everyday phone.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

I was just reading that Apple has now shut down production on iPods, so the inventory in stores now is it, it's the end of an era.

I went through a few of them in the decade after the first iPod came out.  I think the first one I got was the 5Gb click wheel one, then a couple of nanos.  These days I just stream SiriusXM for music on the go, I don't bother loading mp3s on my phone anymore.

[LucasM]

I have no interest in either a smart phone, or streaming music (particularly if not my own collection, since my taste is quite eclectic).  Thankfully my current iPod is working perfectly, and these days I don't use it as much, so it should last quite a while.

But it bothers me that Apple is discontinuing them for the future.

Something I thought years ago, was making a nano-sized player, but with a 'buried' (hidden and protected) USB port on it.  That way, one could easily swap out different music collections &/or upgrade its capacity on the fly.  Wish I had the design ability (i.e. electronic engineer) and financial capacity to make such a thing.  Now that the iPod is no more, it might take off.

[ihavemyreasons]

Had SiriusXM for a year when I traveled a lot for work.  Was nice getting sports everywhere but still turned to my usb thumb drive for music as not many of the music channels matched my tastes. No longer travel much so I dropped XM. I do find it amusing how all of their "special best deals ever" they constantly send me trying to get me to re-subscribe all end up being the same price just stated in different ways.
-50% off for a year
-6 months free if you sign up for 12
-Free year when you commit to two
-Etc.